With the ancients, it was undoubtedly a custom to place the portraits of authors before their works. Martial’s 186th epigram of his fourteenth book is a mere play on words, concerning a little volume containing the works of Virgil, and which had his portrait prefixed to it. The volume and the characters must have been […]

Among the Jesuits it was a standing rule of the order, that after an application to study for two hours, the mind of the student should be unbent by some relaxation, however trifling. When Petavius was employed in his Dogmata Theologica, a work of the most profound and extensive erudition, the great recreation of the […]

Some writers, usually pedants, imagine that they can supply, by the labours of industry, the deficiencies of nature. Paulus Manutius frequently spent a month in writing a single letter. He affected to imitate Cicero. But although he painfully attained to something of the elegance of his style, destitute of the native graces of unaffected composition, […]

Nothing is so capable of disordering the intellects as an intense application to any one of these six things: the Quadrature of the Circle; the Multiplication of the Cube; the Perpetual Motion; the Philosophical Stone; Magic; and Judicial Astrology. “It is proper, however,” Fontenelle remarks, “to apply one’s self to these inquiries; because we find, […]

All men are fond of glory, and even those philosophers who write against that noble passion prefix their names to their own works. It is worthy of observation that the authors of two religious books, universally received, have concealed their names from the world. The “Imitation of Christ” is attributed, without any authority, to Thomas […]

The scholastic questions were called Questiones Quodlibeticae; and they were generally so ridiculous that we have retained the word Quodlibet in our vernacular style, to express anything ridiculously subtile; something which comes at length to be distinguished into nothingness, “With all the rash dexterity of wit.” The history of the scholastic philosophy furnishes an instructive […]

Authors have too frequently received ill treatment even from those to whom they dedicated their works. Some who felt hurt at the shameless treatment of such mock Maecenases have observed that no writer should dedicate his works but to his FRIENDS, as was practised by the ancients, who usually addressed those who had solicited their […]

Besides the ordinary errata, which happen in printing a work, others have been purposely committed, that the errata may contain what is not permitted to appear in the body of the work. Wherever the Inquisition had any power, particularly at Rome, it was not allowed to employ the word fatum, or fata, in any book. […]

There is some probability that this art originated in China, where it was practised long before it was known in Europe. Some European traveller might have imported the hint.[1] That the Romans did not practise the art of printing cannot but excite our astonishment, since they actually used it, unconscious of their rich possession. I […]

“I should,” says Menage, “have received great pleasure to have conversed with Cicero, had I lived in his time. He must have been a man very agreeable in conversation, since even Caesar carefully collected his bons mots. Cicero has boasted of the great actions he has done for his country, because there is no vanity […]

Every lover of letters has heard of this learned society, which contributed so greatly to establish in France a taste for just reasoning, simplicity of style, and philosophical method. Their “Logic, or the Art of Thinking,” for its lucid, accurate, and diversified matter, is still an admirable work; notwithstanding the writers had to emancipate themselves […]

Those ecclesiastical histories entitled Legends are said to have originated in the following circumstance. Before colleges were established in the monasteries where the schools were held, the professors in rhetoric frequently gave their pupils the life of some saint for a trial of their talent at amplification. The students, at a loss to furnish out […]

There are many sciences, says Menage, on which we cannot indeed compose in a florid or elegant diction, such as geography, music, algebra, geometry, etc. When Atticus requested Cicero to write on geography, the latter excused himself, observing that its scenes were more adapted to please the eye, than susceptible of the embellishments of style. […]

Singular inequalities are observable in the labours of genius; and particularly in those which admit great enthusiasm, as in poetry, in painting, and in music. Faultless mediocrity industry can preserve in one continued degree; but excellence, the daring and the happy, can only be attained, by human faculties, by starts. Our poets who possess the […]

Accident has frequently occasioned the most eminent geniuses to display their powers. “It was at Rome,” says Gibbon, “on the 15th of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the Decline and Fall […]

Such a picture may be furnished by some unexpected materials which my inquiries have obtained of Oldys. This is a sort of personage little known to the wits, who write more than they read, and to their volatile votaries, who only read what the wits write. It is time to vindicate the honours of the […]

From the MS. collection of Sir Thomas Browne, I shall rescue an anecdote, which has a tendency to show that it is not advisable to permit ladies to remain at home, when political plots are to be secretly discussed. And while it displays the treachery of Monk’s wife, it will also appear that, like other […]

Houssaie, in his Memoires, vol. i. p. 261, has given the following curious particulars of this singular union:– “The second wife of Philip was Mary Queen of England; a virtuous princess (Houssaie was a good catholic), but who had neither youth nor beauty. This marriage was as little happy for the one as for the […]

It is generally supposed that where there is no QUOTATION, there will be found most originality. Our writers usually furnish their pages rapidly with the productions of their own soil: they run up a quickset hedge, or plant a poplar, and get trees and hedges of this fashion much faster than the former landlords procured […]

[1] We have Royal Societies for philosophers, for antiquaries, and for artists–none for men of letters! The lovers of philological studies have regretted the want of an asylum since the days of Anne, when the establishment of an English Academy of Literature was designed; but political changes occurred which threw out a literary administration. France […]